In a cellular based multi-hop wireless communication system, the main focus of legacy technologies is that a Mobile Station (MS) in service in one cell enhances the overall cell throughput by help of a Relay Station (RS). For example, RS-based cooperative relay schemes, cooperative signal-source diversity, cooperative transmission diversity, cooperative complex diversity, and the like, have been proposed and adopted for the purpose of obtaining diversity. Additionally, to obtain a multiplexing gain, a technique using a multiplexing technology in a Multi Input Multi Output (MIMO) system has been proposed.
In the cellular based multi-hop wireless communication system, the proposed conventional technologies all deal with MS's transmission in one cell and put focus on the enhancement of reliability or transmission rate in one cell. Accordingly, an MS in a cell boundary area essentially is subjected to interference from a neighboring RS and thus, has a problem that this interference leads to a decrease of a throughput of the cell boundary area, therefore causing a decrease of the overall throughput. Further, under circumstances where an RS is introduced to enhance a transmission rate of an MS of a cell boundary area, when considering a relatively low Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) compared with single hop communication, a failure to effectively cancel such interference may cause a big loss in the overall throughput. Thus, there is a demand for a method and apparatus for effectively canceling interference and enhancing a transmission rate in a multi-hop wireless communication system.